1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to digital computers, particularly with respect to the decision and control logic therefor.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The decision and control logic portion of prior art digital computers is generally constructed utilizing random logic design. The specific logic required for the desired functions of the specific variables utilized in the computer is constructed for providing the specifically required decision signals. If it is necessary to provide the same function of different variables, the function logic is generally repeated with the different sets of specific variables hardwired thereto. The random logic approach to control circuitry design generally results in significant amounts of hardware and suffers from the disadvantage of lacking flexibility. Such random logic is generally unsuited to LSI implementation because of the irregularity of the design.
Although in the prior art, micro programming has been utilized in computers permitting much of the control to reside in LSI circuitry, known micro programmed computers still contain significant amounts of random logic to make decisions based on logic functions of Boolean variables.
It is an object of the present invention to provide computer decision and control logic suitable for implementation with LSI components.
It is a further object of the invention to provide high speed computer decision and control logic responsive to static and dynamic variables where the dynamic variables become available toward the end of the computer cycle.
It is a further object of the invention to provide computer decision and control logic that is flexible and effects hardware economy.